


The Accidental Book Club

by inkandpaperhowl



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: just nerds being absolute nerds, no ships just friends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-04
Updated: 2016-02-04
Packaged: 2018-05-18 04:04:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5897554
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inkandpaperhowl/pseuds/inkandpaperhowl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dorian, desperate for some light reading, takes Cassandra’s book recommendation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Accidental Book Club

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kogiopsis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kogiopsis/gifts).



> kogiopsis requested this, because we were talking and realized that people do not appreciate the Dorian/Cassandra friendship aesthetic enough, and then I wrote her up a mock version of this fic and was like “sure, what if I wrote that I’m gonna write that” so here we are.
> 
> I love you, here you go, have some Team Book Club.

Cassandra could hear the swearing before she even reached the stairs. She exchanged a look with Solas, who merely rolled his eyes and pointed upward. Curious, she made her way to the library, where she found Dorian, cursing in Old Tevene and throwing books off the shelves around him, leaving them in scattered piles, their covers bending, their pages flapping. 

“Dorian, what are you _doing_!?” She interrupted him, a look of horror spreading over her face as she took in the disaster area around him. The other researchers were crowded together on the other side of the library, huddled in what appeared to be slightly-amused fear--apparently none of them were brave enough to stop Dorian, but they were all eager enough to laugh about it. 

“What?” he snapped, not looking down from his intense inspection of the titles on the highest shelf. “This is a disgrace. A _disgrace_. We are the most powerful force in the world right now, and we can’t even get a decent translation of Mareno’s _Dissertation on the Fade as a Physical Manifestation_ , I mean, _really_.” 

“And this is what prompted the hurricane-like destruction of the library?” Cassandra asked, folding her arms over her chest and leaning against a bookcase. Dorian _tsk_ ed in annoyance and threw another leatherbound monstrosity onto his pile of rejected tomes before climbing down off the ladder to face her. 

“These should all be taken away and set on fire; they’re drivel, and completely useless, and it’s an outrage that this is the best the Inquisition can get.” He stomped past her into the window alcove he’d claimed as his own and rifled through a stack of papers until he came up with one that had clearly been ripped off of a scroll of notes--it was about a foot long, and simply covered, front and back, with tiny, cramped handwriting that was hardly legible. “Here,” he said, shoving it at her, “No good library would be caught dead without copies of these titles, and yet, here we are.” He threw himself into his chair, and stared moodily across the the sea of bent paper, sighing. 

“Dorian, I can’t even begin to read this,” Cassandra protested, running her finger down the list of titles, all of which had been abbreviated into some sort of personal short hand that was hard enough to decipher without the messy scrawl of the handwriting. “Does that say ‘History of _Nugs’_?” 

“No, it doesn’t,” Dorian snapped, snatching the paper back from her and squinting at it. “Oh.” He flipped it upside-down, the right-side-up again. “Perhaps it does. I suppose I should revise this list before sending it to Lady Montilyet with a strongly worded note about the state of the library. Someone’s made a right mess of it.” 

Cassandra stared at him. She didn’t think he was talking about the books he’d strewn across the floor. 

“Of course,” she said. Dorian sighed and pushed himself out of his chair; he continued to grumble quietly as he began straightening the piles of discarded books. “Do you need any help with...all this?” she asked belatedly. 

“Not unless you can get me a copy of that Aserathan treatise on the Fade by tomorrow,” he said, and Cassandra took it as a good sign that the jovial, mocking tone was back in his voice. “Maker, I’m going to have to read that fluff on the First Blight _again_ while I’m waiting for it. Genitivi is a great scholar, but his prose is so florid.” 

“Ah, that true hardships of being so far from civilization,” Cassandra said dryly. Dorian chuckled. 

“Yes, that and the fact that any dates I order are long rotten by the time they make their way up the mountain, and are unpeeled regardless. My life is a tragedy,” he said, dramatically clapping the back of his hand to his forehead in fake distress. Cassandra smiled, shaking her head. 

“I take it that beyond research, the library is still not up to standard?” she asked, leaning down to help him shift a stack of books closer to the railing, out of the main walkway. 

“Oh, it’s just I’ve read everything here twice now,” he said, shrugging. “There’s only so many dry, magical texts a man can read before his brain begins melting and he just has to read something more fun. But of course, the closest thing to _fun_ the Inquisition has collected are the complete works of Brother Genitivi.” 

“There, I might be able to help you,” Cassandra offered, the words out of her mouth before she realized what she was saying. 

Dorian paused, staring at her. “You have books, my lady Seeker?” he said, incredulous. “Not that it’s surprising to find that you _read_ , but--”

“Yes, yes, you’re hilarious,” she said, rolling her eyes. “They are probably not to your taste at all, and I shouldn’t have mentioned it.” 

“Cassandra, _please_ , I’m desperate,” Dorian protested. “I would kill a man for a copy of the _Randy Dowager Quarterly_.” Cassandra let out a snort of suppressed laughter. 

“All right,” she said. “I will bring it to you when I’m done with Leliana. She has news from the Inquisitor--apparently it is raining in the Fallow Mire.” 

Dorian laughed. “Well, then I’m infinitely glad that I’m still here. Even if here is two weeks’ journey from the nearest decent book.” 

.

An hour later, Cassandra went to the stables and confiscated an unused burlap sack, returning with it to her room above the armory. She unlocked her trunk and carefully dug under the mess of clothes and armor-polishing clothes and bits of ribbon and feathers she’d collected in her journeys with the Inquisitor until she reached the collection of books she kept buried at the very bottom, only to be taken out when no one else was near or could possibly find out that she had them. 

It wasn’t that she was _embarrassed_ by them, but she had a reputation to maintain. 

It took her three tries to pull the first installment of _Swords and Shields_ out from under its sequels. She transferred it to the burlap sack, making sure that the cloth did a decent job of hiding the distinctive cover of the book, and returned with it to Dorian. 

“Here,” she said, handing him the sack. He looked between it and her, confused, eyebrows raised. 

“You’re giving me a sack? How...delightful.” 

“Don’t be an idiot,” she snapped. “It’s the book you requested.”

“Oh, of course,” he said, a hint of suspicion creeping into his voice. “Books normally come in sacks.” 

She sighed. “I warned you that you probably won’t like it. It’s...ridiculous. And wonderful. But awful. Just...read it. And don’t tell anyone you got it from me.”

.

About half an hour later, Varric was heading up to see Leliana--she’d told him if any more of his reports came in later than she asked for, she would find creative ways to burn his manuscripts--when he heard a squawk of laughter from Dorian’s alcove, which had strangely been blocked in by towers of books in varying heights. It was nearly impossible to see the mage behind the wall of paper and leather, but his muffled voice echoed through the empty library. 

“ _Kaffas_ , is that even anatomically possible?” 

Varric shook his head, not entirely sure he wanted to know what Dorian was talking to. 

“ _Are you quite comfortable or shall we continue_ , please, Knight-Captain, I don’t think the captain of the guard is particularly interested in ‘comfortable’ right now.” 

Varric froze. He knew that line, and if it was paired with those titles... He stalked over to Dorian’s wall of books and carefully moved aside half of a stack so he could glare through the hole left behind. “What the hell are you reading?” he demanded. Dorian let out a yelp of surprise, followed by a curse, and quickly dropped the book down so Varric couldn’t see the cover. 

“Nothing?” Dorian said unconvincingly. 

“Please,” Varric said, his eyes flat. “You talk to your books when you read, Sparkler. It’s a terrible habit of yours.” 

“Then, I’m sure you know quite well what I’m reading,” he responded tartly, shifting in his chair so he could reach the glass of wine perched precariously on the bookshelf behind him. 

“Yeah, I’m just really curious where the heck you found it,” Varric said, crossing his arms. “I was pretty sure I purged all copies from the Inquisition’s collection back at Haven.” 

“You don’t want people reading your brilliant prose?” Dorian asked, a grin spreading across his face as he sipped his wine. 

“No, I _want_ them reading my brilliant prose. I _don’t_ want them reading my absolute drivel. Seriously, where did you get it?”

“I’m bound to secrecy,” Dorian replied, sniffing disdainfully at Varric’s question. “Truly. Couldn’t tell you if I wanted to.”

Varric sighed, but moved the stack of books back into the artificial wall. “I hope you enjoy melting your brain on that rot,” he grumbled. He heard Dorian chuckle behind him. 

“Oh, believe me, Master Tethras, I’m finding this _delightful_.” 

Varric honestly couldn’t tell if Dorian was being sarcastic or not. 

.

Three hours later, there was a furious pounding up the stairs of the armory, and Cassandra looked up from her makeshift desk to see Dorian, wild-eyed and frantic, throwing himself into her room, the burlap sack clutched in his hands desperately. 

“Maker’s _breath,_ Cassandra, that was the worst thing I have _ever_ read.” 

She blinked at him, and opened her mouth to protest that she had warned him and that if he didn’t like it there had been no reason for him to finish it, but Dorian wasn’t done.

“It was _terrible_. There was a plothole the size of an abyssal high dragon, and I don’t think half of the things they did were legal, and the other half were hardly anatomically correct, and I can feel my teeth rotting away from the sappy romantic dialogue, and by Andraste’s fuzzy, winter knickers, I swear, I have never read anything so awful in my life. I need the second part. Now. Immediately. Please, tell me you have the second part.” 

It took Cassandra a moment to work through what he had said--she was still gearing up to defend her literary tastes to him--but when he finished, breathlessly, she burst out laughing. 

“What? Oh, you don’t have it, do you? Maker’s balls, Cassandra, he ended it on a bloody _cliffhanger_ \--the magistrate is sending her to the Wounded Coast so he can _kill_ the Knight-Captain! I can’t take this much longer!” 

But Cassandra was still laughing. Her sides were beginning to ache with it, but she couldn’t stop. The look on Dorian’s face was something akin to real pain, and all over a truly horrible romance novel she had assumed he would hate. 

“I have the second one,” she managed to wheeze, just so he would stop looking like he was going to fling himself down the stairs. “Don’t worry.” She hiccuped over the last of her laughter, releasing her grip on her desk and gulping in air before making her way over to her trunk. 

“Oh, thank the Maker,” Dorian said, and his relief was palpable. “I cannot believe you read this absolute shit, Cassandra.”

“Please,” she said dryly, “It’s beautiful.”

“That’s just it, though, isn’t it?” Dorian said, sounding offended. “If this is Varric at his worst, how amazing is his best? His _prose_ is _stunning_.” 

“I know,” Cassandra agreed ruefully, digging up the second and third books and handing them to Dorian, who accepted them with something like reverence. “He’s a pain in the ass, but he certainly knows how to turn a phrase.” 

“That whole passage where he describes the night in Darktown--it was almost like I could smell it right there in the room--”

“Yes, and the chapter about the sounds of the docks at night--”

“--when the stars shine on the water--”

“--and glint off the river of her hair--”

\-- _yes--”_

They progressed in this manner for a full fifteen minutes. 

.

Several weeks later, after the Inquisitor had somehow managed to wrangle the next installment out of Varric and presented it to Cassandra with a grin, Varric tracked Dorian down in the library and held up a pristine, never-before-opened, fully illustrated copy of his _Tale of the Champion_. 

“I heard a rumor you were devouring my entire collected works,” he said slyly. “Since I know you’ve read the dregs, I thought I’d upgrade you to something more worth your time.”

“Oh, Varric, you didn’t have to,” Dorian said, but he took the book with gentle hands, stroking the fine leather binding. “There are copies floating around I could have borrowed.”

Varric laughed. “Yeah, you’ve been borrowing all of my books from the Seeker, and trust me, you don’t want to read her copy of this one. It’s got a hole through it.” 

Dorian frowned. “A hole?”

“Yeah, she stabbed it. Long story. I’ll tell you about it after you finish that.” He pointed at the glorious copy he’d given the mage, and smiled as he left. “Enjoy.”

“Oh, I’m sure I will.” 

.

Two days later, Hawke and her Warden friend straggled back into Skyhold with the Inquisitor, returning from Crestwood with bad news. They were greeted by Dorian and Cassandra, both of whom were awkwardly holding something behind their backs. Varric stood off to one side, hiding laughter behind one hand. 

“What’s going on?” Hawke asked. Varric merely gestured to the two, nervously grinning friends, who sheepishly presented her with their copies of _the Tale of the Champion_. One was pristine, crisp, beautiful. The other was tattered, yellow, and had a stab wound. 

“They want you to sign them, Hawke,” Varric choked out through his laughter. “I tried to give the Seeker a new copy, too, but she refused. She’s very attached to that disgusting manky thing. Not so attached that she was unwilling to maim it beyond readability.” 

“I’m perfectly capable of reading it, still,” Cassandra protested while Hawke added her laughter to Varric’s. 

“If you say so, Seeker. If you say so.”

Hawke signed the books, of course, and after much protesting, Varric did too. Dorian and Cassandra wandered off to compare autographs, leaving a howling pair of friends behind them. 

.

A few days later, Cassandra finally finished the last installment of _Swords and Shields_ and smuggled it to Dorian. Varric had said he rarely gave previews, and she had promised not to let anyone else see the unedited version, but Dorian had been desperate. 

“I still can’t believe you made me read this,” Dorian grumbled, accepting the burlap sack with the care he normally reserved for live animals or glass figurines. 

“Yes, but aren’t you pleased that I did?”

Dorian glared at her, but sighed. “Yes,” he muttered. “Now go away, I have time to read this whole thing if I start now and don’t stop before we need to leave for the Western Approach in the morning.”

“Have fun,” Cassandra said. 

Varric, on the stairs below them, laughed. 

.


End file.
